Oppose SB 6016 – A Backdoor for Sprawl

Please take 2 minutes today to submit “CON” testimony on SB 6016, sponsored by Sen. Jessica Bateman. Submit your position here: https://app.leg.wa.gov/csi/Senate?selectedCommittee=34080&selectedMeeting=33614

Why this matters:

SB 6016 isn’t a harmless technical fix. It reopens a flawed 2022 loophole in Washington’s Growth Management Act that allows Urban Growth Area (UGA) “swaps” to be used as a backdoor UGA expansion.

In Thurston County, this directly enables the BAR Holdings/Salish Landing proposal—a plan to build a mini-city on 38 acres of forestland in a rural area, outside of where growth belongs.

What’s at stake:

• Forestland and rural character

• A critical aquifer recharge area (CARA I – the most sensitive category)

• Salmon runs on the already-impaired Deschutes River

• The integrity of the Growth Management Act

This land was purchased for the low price of $400,000 precisely because it is zoned 1 home per 5 acres. The developers' goal is to flip cheap land and put it into the Tumwater Urban Growth Area to make millions—despite the fact that Tumwater’s own Buildable Lands Study shows the UGA already has enough land for population growth for the next 20 years.

Developers are trying to revive the weaker 2022 UGA swap law, instead of using the stronger 2024 UGA law that the Legislature passed specifically to fix these sprawl problems and protect water resources.

Key point:

A “swap” that increases development capacity or weakens groundwater protection is functionally a UGA expansion—and the GMA already has rules for that. SB 6016 is an end-run around those rules.

Please submit CON, and feel free to share this post. Timing matters. This is how sprawl gets locked in—quietly, unless people speak up.